Shoretel is Synonymous with VOIP
June 17, 2014
Shoretel is Synonymous with VOIP
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Call Recorder, Enterprise Contact Center, PBX, Shoreware Director
Overall Satisfaction with ShoreTel VOIP
Shoretel was a great tool for several companies I worked for. In both cases I had the extremes of either end. Large Enterprise Contact Center usage to manage a call center of over 100 agents, to a small 20 to 30 agent Customer Service. Shoretel enabled me to make on the fly decisions when changes happened quickly. The Shoreware director helped with setting up Call Attendants, VM, extensions and call flow quickly and efficiently. At the time, both companies were used to wired PSTN traditional telecom systems. Expensive hardware and outdated software would require more time and follow up work to complete a given task. Utilizing VOIP, we gained the flexibilty to drop a system into a location that has existing network access with little or no effort. The Total cost of the system was a win for us as we saved over 45% in costs from traditional telecom costs.
- Reseller Support was great! They were able to provide qualified and highly skilled technicians for implementation projects and upgrades. Having a support team to extend the technical knowledge when you have a limited staff, really helps sell the product to the executive management.
- The use of MGCP/SIP helped us tremendously when years ago, we were limited on bandwidth. Having compression enabled and still having a quality MOS score provided our customers with clear voice quality.
- IP Switches used for the phones were very easily managed. Purchase and forget. Not much maintenance and easy to configure for use. Do not need to maintain a large network staff to manage these devices.
- Implementation of upgrades were always successful, but would take 8 hours or more. The concerns with downtime during a short closed period was always a concern.
- IP Switches would have difficulty recovering when a PRI would flap or bounce several times in a given period and would lock up forcing a reboot. This was not very often, but in a call center getting over 250,000 calls a month, this is a concern.
- The biggest cost savings for us and potential for future growth was the ability to use SIP trunking. This reduces the expensive need for numerous PRI trunks and redundancy.
- The ability to change announcements, add call flow functionality in a call center helped with making quick decisions on the fly to support sales
Shoretel was in the VOIP business from the beginning. They have mature development processes and their software is stable. They did not just lump products from other acquisitions and slap a new brand on their product. I have used open source systems (Asterisk) to 3COM VCX platform with their integrated network switching platform. The difference is, Shoretel has had the end to end software and monitoring visibility to ensure the product is working efficiently. From using the Shoreware Director to view network statistics to the ECC Monitoring of agent calls and activity. The Reporting uses Crystal Reports and was an easy transition for our teams who already had this skillset. Testing was a huge sucess over the other products. The ability to test the trunk you are working in the Test Trunk Tool. Not having to be physically in the location to test the PRI's when needed. Other systems have this too, but they are not as easy to use in my opinion. Lastly the licensing model is straight forward and not expensive. They are competitive with the market.